You may have heard about KFC running out of chicken in the UK. Unlike Chipotle's earlier problems here in the US the concern wasn't food-safety, it was pure logistics. A new carrier (DHL) wasn't making the deliveries on time. That got me thinking about trucking here in the US and the shortage of truck drivers we are experiencing.

Several years ago we discussed the disruptive and transformational parallels of change and the degree of change is not slowing down for a moment. I talk to food guys every day after all it’s what I do and am very sensitive to change. As we deliver our services we are “change agents.” Today we’ll address that from a different perspective and hopefully see what my readership thinks.

Last week we reviewed the complex concept of TCO (Total Cost of Ownership). We’d like to take the complexity down a notch and look at a recast of our News Letter done 13 years ago. Remember if you keep it simple you have a better chance of getting it right.

Several weeks ago we touched on why the big move to Cloud Computing. As we announced one of the main reasons we were acquired was our leadership in the area of Software as aService (SaaS) in the Cloud. Today we will discuss the concept of Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).

Normalization of risk (sometimes called normalization of deviance) is a buzz-word for:

“The gradual process through which unacceptable practice or standards become acceptable. As the deviant behavior is repeated without catastrophic results, it becomes the social norm for the organization.”

My home city are Super Bowl Champions now, but I respect their opponent's degree of success over the last 17 years and 5 Super bowl wins. I guess 'you can’t win them all' applies to them. Five years ago we talked about the disruptive and transformational parallels. Change is moving even faster and will continue to increase its pace as technology continues its exponential growth.

I have been providing business software to the food industry for the past 29 years. Like my readers I have seen a lot of ups and downs in the marketplace. Today I'd like to make an analogy to describe a recent 'up'.

January 23, 2018 — Computer Associates (“CAI” or the “Company”), a leading provider of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software and related services to customers in the food, lumber and building materials (LBM), precious metals, and other industries globally, today announced that it has acquired 100% of Integrated Management Solutions, developers of the Food Connex™ business management software for meat, seafood and poultry distributors and processors, providers of dry goods, provisions, specialty items and produce.

I've seen thousands of food businesses make decisions on business software over the last twenty-five years. I've won a lot of deals, I've lost a lot of deals, but the losses that hurt most are when a potential client makes a mistake and buys 'the wrong' software. I'll see these companies shopping again a year later, and tens of thousands of dollars poorer with no improvement to their business. Today we'll talk about how to avoid that situation.

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You may have heard about KFC running out of chicken in the UK. Unlike Chipotle's earlier problems here in the US the concern wasn't food-safety, it was pure logistics. A new carrier (DHL) wasn't making the deliveries on time. That got me thinking about trucking here in the US and the shortage of truck drivers we are experiencing.